It is known for automobiles to provide passengers with the ability to adjust the temperature and climate within the passenger compartment of the automobile. For example, passengers are able to adjust the automobile's interior temperature by controlling the amount of hot or cold air delivered by the heater or air conditioner units. Passengers are able to not only adjust the amount of air-flow into the interior compartment, they are able to direct the location of the delivered air. It is further known that these automotive air control systems incorporate user-adjustable control knobs on the automobile's interior dashboard or control panel to permit the passengers to adjust the amount, type and direction of air-flow to the interior passenger compartment. These known adjustable knobs are conventionally mounted to the dashboard panel and are connected to underlying circuit boards mounted to the back surface of the dashboard. Conventional circuit boards include multiple components mounted to the circuit boards to control the operation of the automotive air control system. For example, potentiometers and other similar components are mounted to, or incorporated on, the circuit board using traditional methods such as soldering, through-hole mounting and surface mount technology to control the operation of the air control system. In addition, multiple resistors are often mounted to the circuit boards using similar techniques to provide multiple resistance values to further control the functions of the air control system.
The existing circuit board technology for providing temperature and climate control within the interior of an automobile has been mostly effective and useful. However, such technology has certain drawbacks. By way of example, the circuit board technology requires multiple components and parts that require considerable assembly and labor, including the need to solder the potentiometers and resistors to the circuit board. The soldered components are subject to damage when exposed to cleaning processes and solutions because they deteriorate the soldered connections between the potentiometers and resistors to the circuit boards. Other drawbacks exist with respect to existing circuit board technology that are overcome by the present invention.